coxy's blog

Earlier tonight, I managed to cancel the remaining time on my 18-month Orange mobile phone contract, without any problems whatsoever. I could do this because Orange broke the contract.

The short back-story is that Orange are increasing their call charges across all non-business contracts from five pence per minute to fourteen pence per minute should you go over your allocated monthly call allowance. In turn, this breaks their original contracted agreement and makes you eligible to terminate your contract early, void of any additional charge. More details here.

I called up, spoke to a friendly chap in the Billing dept called Kevin and asked him to explain what's going on with the call charges being raised in regards to this breaking the contract - and he did just that. He also said that people who are savvy to this have been calling up and asking for either a) a better deal, or b) to cancel outright and that he'd put me through to 'Disconnections' to have a chat with them about it.

The guy in that department wasn't so friendly, but he's got the job of trying to keep customers on Orange. I told him that I wanted to cancel my contract because of Orange hiking the charges - as no doubt he's heard so many times this evening already. I referenced a deal which I was eying up elsewhere on Virgin Mobile and he said that he could match that for me.

I refused and said I'd like to cancel. He said I'd receive a PAC code within 5 working days and that the contract will be canceled once I use the PAC code. If I don't use the PAC code within 30 days, service will carry on as normal until I re-request the PAC code. Once the contract has been successfully canceled, I'll will receive a written confirmation of this.

Easy. The whole phone call lasted about 5 mins and wasn't any trouble at all.

Tomorrow I get to venture into town after work and shop around for new phones, contracts and deals. I'll most likely end up back on Virgin Mobile as part of their Liberty Sim deal with Unlimited Data (and where you're not tied down to a contract and can cancel any time, but don't get a free handset) and am eying up the Google Android-based HTC Hero - unless anyone has a better suggestion?

It's not like me to post anything useful to others on my blog, but I've discovered how to set up the 'Blog This' button on photo-sharing website Flickr to work with your Opera Community blog. It's not rocket science, but up until today I didn't know how to do it, and couldn't find any reference to making them work together online; so I thought I'd write a quick tutorial for anyone that was struggling with this.

For those that don't know what the 'Blog This' button does; pressing it will automagically post that Flickr photo to your blog without you having to write any HTML, BB Code or go to any trouble of even logging in / visitng your blogging service (in this case, Opera Community).

Step One

First thing you need to do is go to Flickr's 'Add a Blog' page. To find this yourself, click on the dropdown arrow next to 'You' in the main navigation, select 'Your Account', click 'Extending Flickr', click 'Edit' alongside 'Your Blogs' and click 'Add a Blog'. You should see a page that looks something like this:

Step Two

Select 'MetaWeblogAPI Enabled Blog' from the dropdown, and click 'Next'

Step Three

On this screen you need to enter some important information. Your API Endpoint is your Opera Community account URL with /api/ on the end. This means mine looks like this: API Endpoint: http://my.opera.com/coxy/blog/api/

You should replace 'coxy' with the username you use to login. Your API Endpoint will look something like this: http://my.opera.com/USERNAME/blog/api/

Hopefully you're intelligent enough to fill in the 'Username' and 'Password' fields by yourself, but if you need a hint, it's your Opera Community login details - and not your Flickr login details. Hit 'Next'.

A completed form looks something like this:

Step Four

Some people have more than one blog tied to their Opera Community accounts - if you're an owner or moderator of a group, for example, you have access rights to post on multiple blogs. This screen shows all the blogs you can post to, and it's where you get to select which blog you'd like to add to Flickr.

Most people won't need to worry about this as they only have one blog tied to their Opera Community account, or their main blog will be selected as default anyway. Before it all gets confusing, just hit 'Next' and we'll proceed.

Step Five

The next two screens are just confirmations. The first one is for you to read and verify that all your details are correct. If they're not, make amends. If they are, hit 'All Done'. The second one you'll see after this is a congratulations screen. This means you're all set up and ready to go.

The End

So, that's pretty much it - I told you it wasn't rocket science.

From now-on, all you need to do to post your favourite Flickr photos to you blog is just hit the 'Blog This' button. It really is that easy.

If you feel like you can take it to the next level though; there are a number of different layout options to pick from, or even the option to totally customize your templete. You can edit these by clicking 'Layout' on 'Your Blog' settings.